


As a stranger give it welcome

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Advice, American Civil War, Flowers, Gen, Humor, Magic, Male Friendship, Responding to a Prompt, honestly it was a prompt I gave someone else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 11:17:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17202476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: He believed in God. He couldn't believe in himself.





	As a stranger give it welcome

He brought the first boy back to life by accident. Henry had laid his hand across the private’s cool forehead and recited one psalm, then another, the words running into each other. He could not have told anyone which verses he chose or why, he only spoke and felt his own heart beating, steadily, within his breast, his own breath vital on his lips. The boy was still, in the process of becoming a body with its soul fled and he cursed to himself, _damn it, not this one_. Someone called him away and he left the dead boy from Pennsylvania in the sheet Mary would make into his shroud.

Three hours later, the boy, named John like so many of them, asked for water. Then broth. He asked for the pastor to come to him and then trembled when Henry sat beside him.

“It was you. What brought me back. I seen—I dunno, but it was something and then you said, clear as day, _damn it!_ And I was here again, my leg aching fierce and my belly empty,” John said.

“I think you’re mistaken, John,” Henry replied. He’d been nearly a corpse at the time he recalled, his breaths agonal, few and harsh, his flesh cold.

“I’m not, I tell you—and I’m the one what ought to know, ain’t I?” John insisted. His color was good, his thin cheeks slightly rosy, not the hectic flush of a fever or rash.

“It is God’s will, what happens here. Everywhere, John,” Henry said, reminding them both. He found it poor consolation these days and John looked skeptical, an odd expression for a boy who’d near died a few hours earlier.

“P’haps. Or maybe you ain’t just a man of God, Reverend,” John said. 

“That’s all I am,” Henry said.

“Been wrong before, though. Thought I was a goner,” John said. “I’d like something more than that broth. They got any bread in the kitchen?”

“I’ll see,” Henry answered, glad to have an easy task.

 

John from Pennsylvania was the first. The first Henry could point to with any certainty. It took a fortnight for him to believe, a period when he saved Peter and George, Fred Bennett and his younger brother Clarence, Timothy Franklin who hadn’t woken from the ether until Henry laid a hand on his shoulder and willed it, imagining a flower pushing through the darkness of the earth. It wasn’t every man, but those he laid his hands on had a way of reviving; those who pulled something from within him more powerful than the words of the psalms or hymns gasped like swimmers taken from the sea, like babies screaming in the cold air for their mothers. Matron was the first to notice, but Jed was the first to speak.

“Seems to me you haven’t known for very long,” Jed said lightly, on an evening when the shades were drawn and they two were alone in the officers’ makeshift parlor. 

“Known what?” Henry asked.

“What you are. Who you are,” Jed clarified. He crossed his legs at the ankle and though his collar was undone and his sleeves still rolled up, he looked every inch the gentleman planter.

“And what is that?”

“Near as I can tell, and I’m not an expert, mind you, you’ve a gift. Beyond others,” Jed said.

“Foster, speak plainly,” Henry said.

“I’d say a wizard, though there may be a better term. A latent alchymist? A Paracelsus? Nurse Mary’s read a good deal of German philosophy, she may have a more subtle grasp on these matters than a simple physician,” Jed said, smiling.

“What in heaven’s name!” Henry exclaimed.

“Indeed! Yet, there is no reason to believe your abilities incompatible with your faith or vocation,” Jed replied.

“A wizard and a pastor? How can it be?”

“God is ineffable, omnipotent, incontrovertible. How can it not? Our failures of comprehension reflect our limitations, not His,” Jed said.

“I cannot believe I’m hearing this from you of all people, Jed. A man of science,” Henry replied.

“I know there are plenty of surgeons in the US Army who’d blanch at drilling a hole in a man’s skull—and yet it’s the right treatment. I understand the science and they do not. Who’s to say there isn’t a science to what you do that we just don’t grasp yet?” Jed countered.

“I suppose,” Henry replied.

“As I said, perhaps consult with Mary. She may have read more,” Jed suggested, leaving off her title, as he sometimes did when it was late. Or when he did not feel he must conceal himself.

 

He did not speak to Mary, though he meant to. Matron stopped him before he could.

“Don’t trouble her,” Matron began. “She’ll worry herself to pieces, staying up to all hours reading the books she’s brought, praying over it and she’s enough to contend with.”

“I don’t wish to bother Nurse Mary,” Henry said.

“She won’t find an answer for you there, anyway. And what it’ll do to her, those dreams—it’s enough for me to manage just now,” Matron said obliquely.

“Dreams?” Henry repeated.

“You need channeling. Else you’ll bring back one as needs to go. My advice—pick a set of psalms, ask your sisters to send along some seeds for flowers that don’t take much tending. I’ll find you some clay pots for your windowsill. Watch Anne Hastings, not Hale, to see who needs you most,” Matron said, ignoring Henry’s question.

“So you also believe it? That I’m a wizard?” Henry asked.

“I don’t believe the sky is blue, boyo. I don’t believe what I know,” she said, patting him on the hand. “You’ll manage, with help. You’ve the time.”

“So I must get a velvet cloak and find a wand of hazelwood? Grow my beard to my knees?” Henry said in disbelief. Matron laughed, the sound harsh, real as a wagon wheel pulling free from a rut, a crow’s declaration of the dawn.

“Do you mean to join a traveling circus? Leave your commission?” she said.

“No. But you said, Jed believes I’m a wizard,” Henry replied.

“It’s not your frock coat and collar that makes you a minister. It’s not his apron and scalpel that makes Foster a surgeon. It’s what’s in your mind and your soul,” Matron said firmly.

“And what’s in my heart? What of that?” Henry asked.

“Aye, what of that? What’s in your heart, young Henry Hopkins,” Matron replied, the question becoming something other than an inquiry. She walked away after squeezing his hand one last time, all the answer he would get except the half-dozen clay pots filled with turned earth on the sill in his room, a small crockery pitcher filled with water. The pansies bloomed first, then the bleeding-hearts. The day the foxglove petals showed, he saved Charlie Miller, the man’s smile the benediction Henry hadn’t know he waited for.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt I gave sagiow "Henry Hopkins is a wizard." Title from Shakespeare, the Hamlet "more things in heaven and earth" speech. Sadly, little Emma Green here but plenty of Matron and the lingering sense of Phoster...


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